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The Trial

If Max Brod had obeyed Franz Kafka's dying request, Kafka's unpublished manuscripts would have been burned, unread. Fortunately, Brod ignored his friend's wishes and published The Trial, which became the author's most famous work. Now Kafka's enigmatic novel regains its humor and stylistic elegance in a new translation based on the restored original manuscript.

The Metamorphosis

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.” With this startlingly bizarre sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young traveling salesman who, transformed overnight into a giant, beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. Rather than being surprised at the transformation, the members of his family despise it as an impending burden upon themselves.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

In the bizarre world of Franz Kafka, salesmen turn into giant bugs, apes give lectures at college academies, and nightmares probe the mysteries of modern humanity’s unhappiness. More than any other modern writer in world literature, Kafka captures the loneliness and misery that fill the lives of 20th-century humanity.

Amerika: The Missing Person: A New Translation by Mark Harman Based on the Restored Text

A Brilliant new translation of the great writer's least Kafkaesque novel, based on a German-language text that was produced by a team of international scholars and that is more faithful to Kafka's original manuscript than anything we have had before. With the same expert balance of precision and nuance that marked his translation of Kafka's The Castle, the award-winning translator Mark Harman now restores the humor and particularity of language to Amerika.

Journey to the End of the Night

Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every minute of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty, and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the public in Europe, and later in America.

The Plague

In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising up from the filth, only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. Shortly after, an outbreak of the bubonic plague erupts and envelops the human population. Albert Camus' The Plague is a brilliant and haunting rendering of human perseverance and futility in the face of a relentless terror born of nature.

Ulysses

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.

The Stranger

Albert Camus' The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world, with millions of copies sold. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived, and is certainly one of the most important and influential books ever produced. Now, for the first time, this revered masterpiece is available as an unabridged audio production.

The Metamorphosis: A New Translation by Susan Bernofsky

Franz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. It is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. This hugely influential work inspired George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jorge Louis Borges, and Ray Bradbury, while continuing to unsettle millions of readers.

Notes from the Underground

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The Castle

A land-surveyor, known only as K., arrives at a small village permanently covered in snow and dominated by a castle to which access seems permanently denied. K.'s attempts to discover why he has been called constantly run up against the peasant villagers, who are in thrall to the absurd bureaucracy that keeps the castle shut, and the rigid hierarchy of power among the self-serving bureaucrats themselves.

Gargantua and Pantagruel

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The Possessed

Loosely based on sensational press reports of a Moscow student’s murder by fellow revolutionists, The Possessed depicts the destructive chaos caused by outside agitators who move into a provincial town. The enigmatic Stavrogin dominates the novel. His magnetic personality influences his tutor, the liberal intellectual poseur Stepan Verhovensky, and the teacher’s revolutionary son Pyotr, as well as other radicals.

Devils

Exiled to four years in Siberia, but hailed by the end of his life as a saint, prophet, and genius, Fyodor Dostoevsky holds an exalted place among the best of the great Russian authors. One of Dostoevsky’s five major novels, Devils follows the travails of a small provincial town beset by a band of modish radicals - and in so doing presents a devastating depiction of life and politics in late 19th-century Imperial Russia.

Vanity Fair [AudioGo]

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2666

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Dubliners (Harper Audio Edition)

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The End of the Cold War 1985-1991

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The Brothers Karamazov [Naxos AudioBooks Edition]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a titanic figure among the world's great authors, and The Brothers Karamazov is often hailed as his finest novel. A masterpiece on many levels, it transcends the boundaries of a gripping murder mystery to become a moving account of the battle between love and hate, faith and despair, compassion and cruelty, good and evil.

The Good Soldier

Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal "good soldier" and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for his creator, Ford Madox Ford, he also represents the corruption at society's core. Beneath Ashburnham's charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal.

Gravity's Rainbow

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.

The Master and Margarita

The Devil comes to Moscow, but he isn't all bad; Pontius Pilate sentences a charismatic leader to his death, but yearns for redemption; and a writer tries to destroy his greatest tale, but discovers that manuscripts don't burn. Multi-layered and entrancing, blending sharp satire with glorious fantasy, The Master and Margarita is ceaselessly inventive and profoundly moving. In its imaginative freedom and raising of eternal human concerns, it is one of the world's great novels.

The Secret Agent

This classic precursor to the modern-day spy novel was recently in headlines when it was revealed that the Unabomber drew considerable inspiration from its prophetic portrait of terrorism. Written in 1907 and set in Edwardian London, The Secret Agent resonates just as strongly in today's world, where a handful of fanatics can still play mad politics and victimize the innocent.

Swann's Way

Swann's Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust's seven-volume magnum opus In Search of Lost Time. After elaborate reminiscences about his childhood with relatives in rural Combray and in urban Paris, Proust's narrator recalls a story regarding Charles Swann, a major figure in his Combray childhood....

Publisher's Summary

On his deathbed, Franz Kafka asked that all his unpublished manuscripts be burned. Fortunately, his request was ignored, allowing such works as The Trial to earn recognition among the literary masterpieces of the 20th century. This brilliant new translation of The Castle captures comedic elements and visual imagery that earlier interpretations missed. A traveler known only as K. is promised a job as land-surveyor by officials of the Castle. But when K. arrives in town to claim his position, he learns that owing to a clerical error, his services aren't needed after all. Seeking an explanation, K. endures increasingly frustrating setbacks as he strives in vain to simply make contact with someone, anyone, from the Castle. Saturated with absurdist humor, this haunting novel has fascinated and puzzled readers throughout the world. Some critics praise it as the century's great religious parable, while others interpret it as indisputably antireligious. Critically acclaimed narrator George Guidall sheds light on this dreamlike tale, illuminating the limitless nuances of Kafka's writing.

Listening to the book really brought back memories of 2 years that I lived in Germany. Essentially the book is about people who are quite intelligent when it comes to rationalizing, reasoning, and engineering, but the same people lack willpower, ummph or maybe just fortitude to go outside of the narrow parameters of the rulebooks and beaurocracies that keep them imprisoned. And the culture disdains anyone who undermines the rules and abhores anyone who does not properly respect the strict rules of the culture. The people have no capability to think outside of the box and adapt. Kafka's message was clear, I believe he wrote the book in the 1920's before the German's freely elected Adolf Hitler. If you want a glimpse into the muddled affairs of the still prevalent German political structure, listen to this book.

I'm a Kafka fan, and I read The Castle before hearing the audiobook. This is definitely not for everyone -- long, rambling, seemingly without direction. Many of the passages feel more like a philosophy treatise than a story. It is an unfinished novel, literally ending in the middle of a scene, which leaves one very unsatisfied.

The narration is excellent, although a Kafka novel isn't something you can breeze through -- there are times when you need to stop and let a particular sentence sink in. In many ways I preferred to read the actual book, and take my time with it. This is a book that makes you work -- there are more questions than answers, and no real solutions. Like trudging through snow, it can be both wearying and exhilarating (not to mention deep.)

Before he died, Kafka told his friends how he intended The Castle to end, and that information would have been very helpful to include here. I also recommend The Trial as a much more accessible Kafka novel, which deals with many of the same themes (the individual struggle against a frustrating and obscure bureaucracy).

This is simply amazing. I couldn't wait to get back to it in my 4 hour drives. Couldn't wait! The one thing that may help one get it is that the norman bates-like voice of the landlady and other female parts is in fact exactly faithful to the text. I couldn't recommend this more highly and I commend the reader and producers!!!

This book is a classic, for good reason. It is classic Kafka, with the whole mystic, conspiracy, "what the f''' is going on?" kind of thing that make us love his work. I think parts of it is actually better than the trial, but in the last third of it, there are so many endless monologues and discriptions of how impossible the system and everybody is. It really seems that Kafka is going crazy and paranoid where he sits in his loft writing. And off course, it is not finished, which is one of the things this book is really famous for. The way this book ends is really cool.
Of all the audio-books I have listened to, this one is probably the one of which I still have the most and best mental pictures, and I read it 6 months ago.
The narrator is great, sometimes he talks a bit too fast, but reading Kafka out loud is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world (alongside mr. Obama's), and this considering, he does a perfect job. His voice is also incredible to the atmosphere of the book.

Sometimes you have to be in the right mood to appreciate the classics. When compared to Kafka's other stories, The Castle is sort of a positive-thinking story of the hero's encounter with the mysterious bureaucracy (which surrounds all of us). I had read it before and enjoyed it, but this time I found it rolling-in-the-aisles funny. If you think about it, how certain are you about the structure of the world that surrounds you? Who really controls it, if anyone? Kafka is one of the highest of the high authors, and this is one of his best books.

The reader is too impulsive, too emphatic, too weirdly singsong for this book. All the narration and conversations come out very energetic. It's like listening to a Frenchman speaking English with constant high nasal ending to every sentence. Hard to concentrate on the text.

For example, where K. has a few words with the landlord after refusing to be examined by Momus, the two, K. and the landlord, go at it quite heatedly, when the context suggests that neither had any strong interest in the other and was just bantering.

But this is much better than, at least, the other reading by Jeffrey Howard, who screeches away even more badly.

Both readings are of the new translation, which is not as good as the first translation by Edwin Muir.

I have listened to many, many audio books, and this one is the most disappointing.

I picked it up based on a number of the reviews chiming that it was humorous and gripping. How far from the truth that was.

I listened to the first part and thought that it must get better in the second part. Again, I was wrong. Hour after hour, I thought about stopping and listen to something that had some form of plot, but I figured the closer I got, I would sure miss something and regret it later.

Once it ended, I felt totally ripped off. It didn't really end with any sort of conclusion, it just ended as if it was mid sentence.

This is the most frustrating book I have ever listened to. I got the audio version because I really like this narrator. In the end, I just let the beautiful tones of the voice and words wash over me. Very tangled and strange story. Beautifully read though. Horrible end to an excrutiating and baffling story. I think Kafka is making a good point but causes the reader much suffering in so doing. Like walking in marshmallow.

It's been over 20 years since the mysterious guy in the beret told me to "check out Kafka," and I've been trying to ever since. I haven't been able to finish his stories in print, and apparently I can't get through them in audio form, either.

Listening to this story is like walking on a treadmill inside of a box filled with spaghetti - it's weird, it's all tangled up, it's all the same, and there's no end to it.

I'm told this is his best work. Knowing that it was also unfinished made it so much easier to quit before I'd heard all of it. Goodbye, Franz.

If you're like me, then you'll be tortured with all the pointless, random, incoherent, and sometimes enjoyable, bits of unfinished madness which makes up this work... It was a weird experience... Something to be endured!

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